Crumbling Earth
by MinuSeveN
Summary: Clay Transmutation: Crime pays, if you do it right.


So crime did pay. Hn, who would have thunk?

I checked my map one last time and adjusted the balaclava and gloves. Second rule of the successful thief: preparation is the best skeleton key. Mental, physical, plan and gear. I had everything ready. The thermal imaging goggles were secure over my head. All my tools were secure, comfortably accessible, even those I didn't like much. On my utility belt, the knife and baton weighted.

Third rule of the successful thief: don't be afraid of using every tool in and out your arsenal. Why? First rule of the successful thief: don't get caught, no matter what.

I lowered and activated the goggles. The world became blue and green. The only spot of orange was headed in my direction, but I had planned on that. The guard's rounds happened once every thirty minutes. The fat one, henceforth dubbed Moe, was sent on his way to circle the complex and check the doors while the smart one, I called him Larry, stayed behind and used the TV to watch some very tasteless porn. My nose scrunched up at that memory. I'd almost botched the job when he'd switched channels, the horrible sex and sounds making me freeze in shock and quite a bit of underage horror. The good news was that there was only one TV in the guard's lodge, and it was the same one that displayed the internal security feeds from the building.

So as soon as Moe Lardball passed by my position, he would leave little Larry's line of sight, the signal for him to stop watching the camera feeds. Then I would have precisely seventeen minutes to get in, grab it and run out. I planned on doing it all in fifteen.

Moe the fatass passed by me. I synchronized my watch. Mark 0.

Thirty seconds later I started working on the chain link fence. I touched a gloved finger to it, carefully. The gloves might be insulated, but you didn't play around with electric current like this. And I willed my power to act. In a spreading circle, my fingertip the focal point, the fence started transforming. I pressed my whole hand to it as soon as there was space, the increased skin contact accelerating the process. In seconds, a circle half as tall as I was had been transformed. Perfect. I grabbed the now uniformly gray fence and tore it down like it was made of clay, making a hole.

It was made of clay, by the way. That was my power. The touch of the poor Midas. Striker, terra-cotta transmutative touch. Or something.

I sprinted across the private parking lot, rubber soles making nary a sound. The side door was locked, of course, but that wasn't an obstacle. I touched the lock itself, focussing on the metal that composed the internal mechanisms. As soon as my power started spilling through and acting around the lock, I stopped. Powers should be applied only as much as they were needed, especially in a time-sensitive profession like mine. I pushed the door with my shoulder and the tumbler, now made of clay, easily broke under the pressure, letting me in.

I closed the door behind me and turned on my flashlight. The map I had memorized put the target offices two floors above and the labs on ground level. Policy put the client's wants first, so I ran for the stairs. I bounded up them three steps at a time, less concerned with the noise now that I was inside. The executive offices were found at the end of a myriad of cubicles. I hurried through the rows of depressing white-collar workspaces, barely pausing to pocket an expensive-looking tablet computer that some schmuck had forgotten.

I was working my magic on the locked doors of the main offices when my watch went off, vibrating against my wrist. Mark 1. Five minutes.

Flashlight between my teeth, I forced the cabinets open and withdrew all the A, B, F, S and W files. The totality of the papers nearly filled the main compartment of my backpack. I tested the way my now heavy pack fit against my back. Perfect, I could still move. Next time I took a job like this though, I'd inform myself about the amount of crap I would be expected to carry. That nice paperweight on the desk had to have cost quite a lot, so I took it too. Those beautiful gold-plated ink pens would fetch me a pretty penny too.

I glanced at my watch. I thought I had time for my own personal venture. It wasn't Mark 2 quite yet.

I hurried into a cubicle, mentally calculating distances. I might seem faster to use the stairs, but the electronic locks on the lab's doors would be too much trouble. So I'm going in from above. I shoved a chair to the side and willed my power into the floor. Slowly, the thick separation between this level and the other started transforming. The thicker the material was, the harder it was to affect it. Mark 2 went off just before it got wide enough for me to pass through.

I tested the solidity of the clay underneath me. Too thick, too solid. I grabbed a bottle from my belt and emptied half of it on the floor. The porous material greedily absorbed it. It weakened, the weight of the water dragging it down. A couple of kicks to help gravity and the ceiling of the second floor started crumbling. I took a small gardening spade from its place on the small of my back and stabbed it down three times around the edges of the transformed area. It was always good to have a solid spade with you. You could dig holes with them, or knock out troublesome security guards. Hoping I wouldn't hit anything on my way down, I jumped, breaking through. I hit the floor with a clatter, lumps of clay raining down with me. Drat, that was too loud. No time to worry about it though. I could handle security if it came down to it. Instead, I repeated the process with this floor, being more careful in my approach. I made a hole with my spade before throwing down my backpack onto the empty counter beneath me and descending myself.

It was a bad idea to damage anything fragile in a lab. Who knew what kind of nefarious solutions all those glass vials could contain?

Flietcher Pharmaceutical Solutions was a sister company to the regional giant Medhall. This wasn't their main labs, heavens forbid I break and enter on those, it was dangerous to mess around with biohazards, but this branch did quality control. Which meant they had some of their drugs here. And those? Those were valuable and would earn me enough for months if I played it right. I nearly tore apart the lab looking for them before finding a stack of labeled boxes in a side-room. I filled the remainder of my pack with them.

I burst through the wall to leave the lab and ran to my hole in the chain-link fence like Lung himself was after me. Mark 3, fifteen minutes, went off as I skidded under the opening I had made. Fifteen minutes on the dot. Now I had roughly two minutes to get the hell out of dodge so I hurried to my scooter, hidden in some bushes alongside the road and scrammed.

Honestly, I had no idea what Coil wanted with FPS, or why I was being paid so well, but I didn't really care. It wasn't like my thieving would hurt anybody and I had a lot of care with the contracts I took. The trinkets I had gotten for myself would give me enough pocket money to go and have some drinks at Palanquin itself. Wind buffeted my balaclava and I pulled it off before reaching the more frequented edges of town, letting down my hair in a long braid.

This was for you Dad.


End file.
